Voidlight Weapon?

[theSurgeOfPhysics]

Wit and Jasnah are discussing warfare that will soon become obsolete when he says:  

Quote

“You think your powers are unfair because you slay dozens, and they cannot resist? What happens when a single individual can kill tens of thousands in moments—assuming the enemy will kindly bunch up in a neat little pike block. Things will change rapidly when such powers become common."

"They're hardly common."

“I didn't say they were,” he said. "Yet."

RoW, Page 759

A few pages later, Raboniel describes the outcome of combining Anti-Light with its positive as:

Quote

"Destruction," Raboniel said. "Instantaneous annihilation."

RoW, Page 766

We know that a compressed reaction will cause an explosion, seen earlier in the tower laboratories. Now that Navani’s journal has been sent to Kholinar for study, will we see a frightening new method of warfare by the Fused? This seems a bit too  much like science-fiction, but it is not impossible in the plot given that we’ve seen flying airships. 

Thoughts?

[KaladinWorldsinger]

1 minute ago, theSurgeOfPhysics said:

Wit and Jasnah are discussing warfare that will soon become obsolete when he says:  

A few pages later, Raboniel describes the outcome of combining Anti-Light with its positive as:

We know that a compressed reaction will cause an explosion, seen earlier in the tower laboratories. Now that Navani’s journal has been sent to Kholinar for study, will we see a frightening new method of warfare by the Fused? This seems a bit too  much like science-fiction, but it is not impossible in the plot given that we’ve seen flying airships. 

Thoughts?

The long term plan for the cosmere is supposed to become sci-fi esque, so Brandon is setting it up right now

[Frustration]

I've been convinced for a while that anti-investiture weapons would make a big showing in the rest of the series.

[alder24]

Yes, it's gonna happen. It should happen on a large scale of huge gems filled with investiture, making anti bombs that can annihilate entire cities, but that kind of weapon appearing too often would "break" the story. So probably something smaller, like granates or small bombs to use on a battlefield, not to destroy the whole country - at least at the beginning, during the space era they can get bigger for story purposes.

[cometaryorbit]

The anti-Investiture explosion we see in RoW is pretty small scale, and even that seems to be only because it was under pressure - stabbing Raboniel with an antiVoidlight dagger didn't blow up Navani. So "normal" anti-Investiture/Investiture reactions (if there's such a thing as "normal") probably won't cause large destructive explosions.

Still, there will probably be some version of it eventually. (Maybe raysium/anti-raysium bombs... the solid form is likely far more Investiture-dense than Light or a soul/spren... or perhaps annihilating anti-Light with a Cognitive entity like Raboniel or Phendorana might make most of the energy released go into the Cognitive, whereas a reaction of Physical metal and anti-metal would create a more fully Physical explosion.)

I think that Wit quote might be talking about the Surge of Division (possibly mechanically used or boosted), though.

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

The anti-Investiture explosion we see in RoW is pretty small scale, and even that seems to be only because it was under pressure - stabbing Raboniel with an antiVoidlight dagger didn't blow up Navani. So "normal" anti-Investiture/Investiture reactions (if there's such a thing as "normal") probably won't cause large destructive explosions.

Still, there will probably be some version of it eventually. (Maybe raysium/anti-raysium bombs... the solid form is likely far more Investiture-dense than Light or a soul/spren... or perhaps annihilating anti-Light with a Cognitive entity like Raboniel or Phendorana might make most of the energy released go into the Cognitive, whereas a reaction of Physical metal and anti-metal would create a more fully Physical explosion.)

I think that Wit quote might be talking about the Surge of Division (possibly mechanically used or boosted), though.

Um, gases have very low density, and sustained reactions are much more controlled, and thus less explosive.

And it's actually more powerful than anti-matter.

Spoiler

R'Shara

Does anti-Investiture react to a different Shard’s Investiture in any significant way?

Brandon Sanderson

The answer is kind of a no, kind of a yes. Mostly a no. Anti-Investiture is going to have an explosive reaction. But the thing is, if it’s anti-Investiture of a specific Shard, that explosion is much grander. But you can make that explosion happen in a just antimatter-and-matter same sort of thing. But you can make the explosion bigger.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

 

[cometaryorbit]

Something is very weird there, because while gases are low density, they aren't *that* low. Hydrogen, the least dense gas, is 0.09 grams per liter (90 milligrams per liter) at standard conditions. So 1 cubic centimeter of hydrogen would be 90 micrograms.

Converted to energy with an equal mass of antihydrogen (180 micrograms total), that's:

1.8 x 10^-7 kg * (3 x 10^8 m/s * 3 x 10^8 m/s) = ~1.6 x 10^10 joules or ~3.8 tons of TNT equivalent.

That would have done orders of magnitude more damage than what we see. Even if the amount of Light is more like a cubic millimeter... 3.8 kg of TNT is way too much. And if Light was as dense as air, you'd get more than 10 times as much energy.

Matter antimatter reactions are *ridiculously* energetic. There can't be even a nanogram of mass equivalent being converted into energy in the Physical Realm in an anti-Voidlight/Fused reaction, or Raboniel would have blown up when stabbing her daughter, and Navani would have blown up when stabbing Raboniel.

Edited February 16, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[alder24]

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

Something is very weird there, because while gases are low density, they aren't *that* low. Hydrogen, the least dense gas, is 0.09 grams per liter (90 milligrams per liter) at standard conditions. So 1 cubic centimeter of hydrogen would be 90 micrograms.

Converted to energy with an equal mass of antihydrogen (180 micrograms total), that's:

1.8 x 10^-7 kg * (3 x 10^8 m/s * 3 x 10^8 m/s) = ~1.6 x 10^10 joules or ~3.8 tons of TNT equivalent.

That would have done orders of magnitude more damage than what we see. Even if the amount of Light is more like a cubic millimeter... 3.8 kg of TNT is way too much. And if Light was as dense as air, you'd get more than 10 times as much energy.

Matter antimatter reactions are *ridiculously* energetic. There can't be even a nanogram of mass equivalent being converted into energy in the Physical Realm in an anti-Voidlight/Fused reaction, or Raboniel would have blown up when stabbing her daughter, and Navani would have blown up when stabbing Raboniel.

Yes this is a big problem. What if the majority of energy is released into SR and just a small fraction in PR? That would work with stabbing a Fused/Spren, as their soul exists in SR, but with light reacting inside of a gem, not really, light is in PR. It still could be "sucked into" SR as it's investiture that's reacting and it involves SR.

[cometaryorbit]

That is probably what is happening, yeah - most of the energy going into other Realms. (Although there's also the possibility that that WOB is some kind of a mistake, because a matter antimatter explosion is absolutely a "significant effect" so why would the answer be "mostly a no"?)

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

That is probably what is happening, yeah - most of the energy going into other Realms. (Although there's also the possibility that that WOB is some kind of a mistake, because a matter antimatter explosion is absolutely a "significant effect" so why would the answer be "mostly a no"?)

It's mostly a no of being different or interesting. Like you can't make a new light by combining anti-stormlight and Voidlight. Which is unfortunate, as I wanted to see that.

[cometaryorbit]

That's possible, I guess, but I'd still call a massive explosion 'reacting in a significant way'. And unless Light and anti-Light are vastly less dense (by orders of magnitude) than any conventional gas*, what we see in RoW just can't be a stronger than matter-antimatter reaction.

*which, hmmm, I guess is technically possible. There's no evidence Light is made of conventional protons-neutrons-electrons atoms, so each atom-equivalent might have a mass much less than a hydrogen atom. Maybe Light "atoms" are made of some kind of Investiture particle, or are Investiture-stabilized exotic atoms, or something.

If the molar mass of Voidlight is say 0.001 (1/1000 hydrogen-1), and the amount of Light storage space in even a decent sized gem is very small (more like a cubic millimeter than a cubic centimeter, or less) it maybe could work. Then you'd get ~1.6 x 10^4 = 16,000 joules ... which is equivalent to a bit less than 4 grams of TNT, but if the energy was released spread out through the body of the Fused stabbed (Raboniel or her daughter) and/or took a second or two for the reaction to complete, wouldn't necessarily be explosive. Water takes up heat very effectively - specific heat of water is a bit more than 4 J / gram / degree C, so if the energy release is spread out a bit in time and/or space it wouldn't necessarily do anything dramatic to a human sized Fused body (if evenly distributed, 16000 J would heat 40 kg of water by a bit less than 1 degree C).

So ... hmmm... if Light is not made of atoms this could actually work.

[alder24]

57 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

If the molar mass of Voidlight is say 0.001 (1/1000 hydrogen-1), and the amount of Light storage space in even a decent sized gem is very small (more like a cubic millimeter than a cubic centimeter, or less) it maybe could work. Then you'd get ~1.6 x 10^4 = 16,000 joules ... which is equivalent to a bit less than 4 grams of TNT, but if the energy was released spread out through the body of the Fused stabbed (Raboniel or her daughter) and/or took a second or two for the reaction to complete, wouldn't necessarily be explosive. Water takes up heat very effectively - specific heat of water is a bit more than 4 J / gram / degree C, so if the energy release is spread out a bit in time and/or space it wouldn't necessarily do anything dramatic to a human sized Fused body (if evenly distributed, 16000 J would heat 40 kg of water by a bit less than 1 degree C).

So ... hmmm... if Light is not made of atoms this could actually work.

I think it was described that smoke left the body when stabbed with anit-light dagger. It could be tissue being burnt, absorbing energy. And the light was most likely released over time because of how Raysium conducts investiture. Quote RoW ch 97

Quote

“Indeed,” Raboniel said. “You may wish to take cover.” Then she turned, walked across the room, and stabbed her daughter in the chest.

Navani was too stunned to move. She stood there amid the rubble, gaping as Raboniel loomed over the other Fused, pushing the weapon in deeper. The younger Fused began to spasm, and Raboniel held her, ruthless as she pressed the weapon into her daughter’s flesh.

There was no explosion. The Voidlight inside the Fused wasn’t under pressure as it was in a gemstone, perhaps. There was a stench of burning flesh, and the skin blistered around the wound. The younger Fused trembled and screamed, clutching at her mother’s arm with a clawed hand.

Then her eyes turned milky, like white marble. She went limp, and Navani thought she saw something escape her lips. Smoke? As if her entire insides had been burned away.

 

58 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

*which, hmmm, I guess is technically possible. There's no evidence Light is made of conventional protons-neutrons-electrons atoms, so each atom-equivalent might have a mass much less than a hydrogen atom. Maybe Light "atoms" are made of some kind of Investiture particle, or are Investiture-stabilized exotic atoms, or something.

What if light is made out of just a pair of quarks? The 3 quarks that make up the proton/neutron weigh 100 times less than the whole proton/neutron. This is getting weird, but it's magic so why not just quarks.

Edited February 17, 2023 by alder24

[offer]

I think that the mass of a sphere of stormlight WILL be very low - we saw this amount of investiture transformed into energy when Radiants used the stormlight for surgebinding, in an light-antilight explosion the amount of energy should be the same (or at least the same order of magnitude).

Probably the biggest gemstone we saw can only hold stormlight equivalent to a tiny fraction of a gram.

[cometaryorbit]

Hmmm, that wording is actually kind of odd:

"The Voidlight inside the Fused wasn’t under pressure as it was in a gemstone, perhaps"

That suggests the anti-voidlight in the dagger gemstone is annihilating with the Voidlight she's holding, not the Odium Investiture making up the Fused Cognitive Shadow itself. But then why does it permakill the Fused? I thought it was literally converting the Shadow's own component Investiture into energy...

[alder24]

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

Hmmm, that wording is actually kind of odd:

"The Voidlight inside the Fused wasn’t under pressure as it was in a gemstone, perhaps"

That suggests the anti-voidlight in the dagger gemstone is annihilating with the Voidlight she's holding, not the Odium Investiture making up the Fused Cognitive Shadow itself. But then why does it permakill the Fused? I thought it was literally converting the Shadow's own component Investiture into energy...

Yes the wording of this is odd. But I don't think it reacts only with the Voidlight Fused is holding. It must react with a soul to kill them without return. Those daggers do react with sprens after all, so it would work the same way with Fused. But the effects of this reaction with a soul might appear only in CR or SR - killing Phendorana, ch 104:

Quote

She looked up with surprise and took the knife straight in the forehead. Then she screamed.

Teft leaped for her, howling, watching in horror as she shrank, writhing as Moash’s dagger pinned her to the floor. Her essence burned, flaring outward like an explosion.

And I found this WoB but it doesn't answer where Fused hold its Voidlight, in their bodies or their gemheart. However both Fused and Venli glow with light, so they have to hold it in their bodies not just gemhearts.

Spoiler

Fantastic-Eggplant-9

It's stated that the Fused can hold Voidlight nearly indefinitely. Does this mean their gemhearts are perfect gems?

Brandon Sanderson

So, kind of. It does not necessarily mean that, how about that. But a similar mechanic is happening.

Fantastic-Eggplant-9

Is this why they are so strict with how they handle their dead?

Brandon Sanderson

It is part of why. You are picking up on the right foreshadowing that I have seeded into the books.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)